Johannesburg — ABOUT 44000 troops are needed to bring peace to the Darfur region of Sudan rather than the 3340 the African Union (AU) intends sending to the region, says Lt-Gen Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general who commanded United Nations (UN) forces in Rwanda at the time of the 1994 genocide.

Dallaire said at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria yesterday that SA should not feel held back by its apartheid past from playing a far greater leadership role in the region. Lack of regional and international action on Darfur and Zimbabwe were "perfect examples" of a lack of political will to prevent crises developing, he said.

Dallaire lectures widely around the world on peacekeeping and has been in SA for the past week.

He met President Thabo Mbeki earlier this week, and has also spoken to senior defence force members and Parliament's defence committee.

He is a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the US, in the field of conflict resolution.

Dallaire said that the AU mandate - which is similar to a UN Chapter VI-type "observe and monitor" mission - was far too weak and would result in it being ineffectual. He said the mandate should be more robust and allow for the protection of civilians and disarmament of militias.

Currently the AU has plans to deploy about 2340 troops with a further contingent of about 1000 made up of police officers and civilians. SA is supplying about 300 troops to the AU mission and more than 100 policemen.

Yesterday Dallaire expressed alarm at the lack of an effective international response to the situation in Darfur.

He questioned the absence of a forceful response from the continent and asked why the outrage about the situation had come mainly from civic groups and individuals in the US and Europe rather than Africa.

But he said that if the west was so keen to see something done about Darfur it should push for a UN Security Council resolution calling for intervention. While that could risk a Chinese veto, as China had sided with the Sudanese government in the past, he said, it would be good to call the Chinese "bluff" and either force them to abstain or to exercise their veto.

If Africa were to take a more forceful lead on Darfur, it would be in a good position to attract far greater support for its peacekeeping missions. He said there was no reason European Union countries should not be prepared to supply troops for use under an AU commander.

As the larger powers were often reluctant to intervene, he said the "middle powers" - including countries such as Japan, Germany and Canada, and SA in its region - should become more actively involved in peacekeeping operations

SA should not be hung up on its apartheid past and fear exercising power in the rest of Africa. Dallaire said he had the sense that, like Germany, SA was afraid to use its influence and exercise leadership and military power on the continent for fear that it would rekindle concern about the past.

In the case of Germany, he said, there was a question of "how far it is using the issue of history (as an excuse) for not taking on a leadership role?"

It was now more than 10 years since the historic changes and SA should not be burdened by the baggage of the past in exercising power.

Dallaire said the nature of warfare had fundamentally changed since the end of the Cold War and the attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001 in the US, but peacekeeping practices had not kept pace with this change.

Warfare was unlikely to consist of two opposing armies, but was characterised by irregular forces often prepared to use suicide bombers and children. He said a "whole new concept of conflict resolution" had to evolve to deal with this new world order.

Dallaire was highly critical of nongovernmental organisations operating in conflict zones as he said they lacked discipline and often bribed warlords to be allowed to distribute food.